Book Review: A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

amy.pauline

5 months ago

Book Rating

3/4

Book Review

A Head Full of Ghosts was good, but it wasn’t great. I expected to be terrified, to stay up late at night, have nightmares, you name it. I was reading a horror book for a reason! It’s almost Halloween and I wanted to be scared. This novel was told in 3 different ways. A little bit was told from the blog of the narrator, a bit was told from present life of the narrator, and a majority was told from the perspective of 8-year-old Merry.

To be honest, 8-year-old Merry drove me a bit batty. I expect most 8-year-old’s would, at least with her amount of energy. I was definitely impressed by the skill Tremblay had to narrate from a young girl’s point of view. She was confused, trying to figure things out, scared, but acting brave. The premise of the story is that her sister was possessed, and they were trying to figure out how to help her, how to make her better. Now that the story is over, I still don’t know what to believe.

I’m honestly just as confused as poor little Miss Merry. The story was told completely, but it had a lot of open-ended what-if’s, and in this case, I just don’t like endings and story lines that are open for interpretation. I mean, I was expecting a story about a paranormal occurrence, a possession! Pretty cut-and-dry, right? A demon enters a girl, the girl gets either saved or not, lots of scary things happen in between. But this was definitely not your run-of-the-mill possession story. Did it make you think? Yes. Did it capture my attention? For the most part, yes. Was it good? Yes. Am I still confused on what exactly happened to Merry and her family? Yep.

A Head Full of Ghosts was definitely worth the read, but I wouldn’t say that I’d read it again, and it wasn’t the Halloween read I was hoping for. Some books have kept me up at night (see Starter House). But this one, I fell asleep reading multiple times. This is because I fall asleep at like 9 o’clock because I’m an old soul, not because it was boring. With how much I absolutely loved the last book I read, Dark Matter, I already knew the next book I read would have a hard time capturing me, just because Dark Matter one was so good. Anyway, if you do end up reading it, let me know what you think actually happened!